Corporate watchdog Ekō has today filed a formal complaint with the European Ombudsman, challenging the European Commission and other EU institutions over their systematic promotion of US-based social media platforms on official europa.eu websites, including Elon Musk’s “X”.  

The complaint argues that prominent “Follow us” and “Share this page” buttons — accompanied by the logos and direct links of platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Meta services, and YouTube — amount to active endorsement of third-country commercial platforms whose data-processing practices have repeatedly been found incompatible with EU fundamental rights standards.   

Logos of the problematic social media companies even appear on EU publications made expressly for children, including an “I colour in Europe” colouring book available on the europa.eu website.  

The complaint highlights that EU institutions already operate a rights-respecting, EU-controlled alternative via Mastodon — which can be accessed anonymously and without exposure to unlawful international data transfers and AI manipulation.

Despite this, US-based platforms receive far greater visibility and prominence on EU webpages.  

According to Ekō, this practice undermines the EU’s own obligations under the Charter of Fundamental Rights, particularly the rights to privacy and data protection, as well as the principles of good administration and institutional neutrality.  

“EU citizens should not be nudged into using invasive third-country platforms which are riddled with scams and illegal content, just to follow or share public information from their own government institutions” said senior campaign manager Eoin Dubsky, who submitted the complaint on behalf of Ekō.

“And corporations which repeatedly violate law shouldn’t be rewarded with free advertising on EU publications.”   

Ekō also raises specific concerns about children’s rights, noting that social media logos and links appear even on EU publications aimed at children, including educational materials.

Conditioning access to public information on the use of platforms that pose documented risks to children’s privacy, safety, and wellbeing is, according to the complaint, incompatible with the EU’s obligations under Article 24 of the Charter.  

In addition, the organisation points to indirect economic and promotional effects, including search-engine optimisation advantages conferred by outbound links from the highly authoritative europa.eu domain — links that are not marked with the keyword “nofollow” to prevent search ranking benefits.

Ekō has asked the European Ombudsman to investigate whether these practices constitute maladministration and to recommend that EU institutions remove third-country social media links and logos from official EU webpages and ensure that all public communications published on external platforms are also made available on EU-controlled, rights-respecting channels.

“It is deeply inconsistent for EU institutions to harshly criticise certain social media corporations on the one hand, while simultaneously promoting their platforms through their logos and links on official EU websites,” Eoin Dubsky added.

“Governments shouldn’t encourage citizens to use harmful apps.”  

A UK startup aiming to solve key challenges in life sciences through AI has unveiled the “world’s first AI models for programmable gene insertion”, as it confirms Nvidia has invested in the startup. London-based Basecamp Research harnesses biodiversity to design new medicines.

It does this by building its own AI models and today it has unveiled a family of AI models capable of programmable gene insertion, which it says offers a new way to replace faulty genes and reprogramme cells for therapeutic use. It is hoped the models can propel a new generation of treatments for cancer and other inherited diseases.

John Finn, chief scientific officer, Basecamp Research, said: “We believe we are at the start of a major expansion of what’s possible for patients with cancer and genetic diseases. By using AI to design the therapeutic enzyme, we hope to accelerate the development of cures for thousands of untreatable diseases, potentially transforming millions of lives.”

The models have been released with a paper, co-authored by Nvidia, Microsoft and academia, and are being unveiled at Nvidia's presentation at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in the US. The new AI models cost tens of millions of pounds to produce, according to Basecamp Research CEO and co-founder Glen Gowers, and have been built in collaboration with Nvidia, whose GPUs the models were trained on.

Gowers said: “It is very similar to the GPT style of models. In fact, the scale of this model is roughly parallel to GPT4 in terms of the training data it has seen.” The models are trained on Basecamp Research's proprietary genomics dataset, which scientists have gathered from around the world.

According to the startup, the models learn the language of DNA and patterns of evolution, allowing the algorithms to design new, programmable therapies for cancer and genetic disease. Gowers said: “In this model, what we test it on is multiple different disease types and multiple different types of medicine.”

He added: “We can type in a pathogen that we want to kill and with about 97 to 100 per cent accuracy, it then produces a peptide that, currently kills in the lab, that pathogen.”

On being able to build models on a smaller budget compared to US AI labs, Gowers said: “You want to really carefully pair the amount of data with the right size of model. It’s not just the case that you throw larger and larger amounts of compute at it.

“We ourselves built the training dataset and we trained the model, which means we can very, very tightly make sure that we have the optimal combination of both.” On the post-training of the models, it used lab-generated data, which helped keep costs down, Gowers said.

The models are not being released as a chatbot, but will be used by the startup in partnership with pharmaceutical companies to design therapeutics. On applications, Gowers pointed to its advantages over CRISPR-based approaches.

He said: “What we are showing in this paper is the ability to do large edits, large insertions, which opens the door to tens of thousands of genetic diseases that today wouldn’t be treatable by CRISPR.”

Basecamp Research has also confirmed that it has secured investment from Nvidia’s VC arm NVentures, in a pre-Series C round, but did not declare how much the chip giant has invested.

Basecamp Research was one of the UK startups named last year by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, which he said Nvidia planned to invest in, along with others such as Revolut and Wayve, as part of a £2bn investment to support the UK AI industry. 

Basecamp Research has raised around $85m to date.

Its investors include VC firms Singular, True Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures and Paul Polman, the former Unilever CEO.

As part of our annual country-by-country series, we now turn our attention to Croatia, a market that continues to build momentum within Europe’s innovation landscape. While smaller than some of its neighbours, Croatia has developed a growing base of startups working across deep tech, software, fintech, and applied AI.

Croatia benefits from a strong engineering tradition, increasing access to early-stage capital, and founders building products for international markets from day one. Zagreb remains the main hub, but more companies are also emerging across the country, reflecting a broader shift toward export-ready technology businesses.

In this article, we highlight 10 promising startups based in Croatia that are worth keeping an eye on in 2026. Together, they show the range of what is being built in the country today and where the ecosystem is heading next.

Zagreb-based Arkensight is developing an AI-powered visual intelligence platform for organisations that operate and maintain critical infrastructure. The platform connects to existing visual sources such as CCTV, drones, satellites, and mobile cameras, and uses artificial intelligence to detect assets, identify damage or anomalies, and monitor changes over time.

Founded in 2024, the company has raised €600k to move from early pilots toward commercial deployment. Arkensight is targeting sectors such as transport, energy, logistics, utilities, and smart cities, where regular visual inspections are costly and time-consuming. Its approach focuses on helping organisations reduce manual inspection work, spot issues earlier, and extract more value from camera systems they already have in place.

Vižinada-based Electric DB is building database technology that helps developers add real-time data sync to modern applications. Its core product, Electric, is a Postgres-based sync engine that keeps data consistent across users, devices, and services. The technology allows teams to replicate only the data that is needed, making applications faster, more collaborative, and easier to scale without building custom sync infrastructure from scratch.

Founded in 2021, the company has raised €550k. Electric DB focuses on developer-friendly tooling that works with existing stacks and frameworks, allowing teams to adopt real-time sync gradually. The platform is open source and is used by companies building collaborative apps, dashboards, and AI-driven systems that rely on up-to-date, shared data.

Čakovec-based Genesis Space Flight Laboratories is developing reusable re-entry capsules that enable frequent and affordable access to microgravity research. The company focuses on supporting biological, pharmaceutical, and materials science experiments by allowing samples to be sent to low Earth orbit and safely returned to Earth. Its GEN capsules are designed to fly multiple times per year, offering researchers a more flexible alternative to traditional space station-based missions.

Founded in 2025 and having already raised €300K, Genesis Space Flight Laboratories builds modular microgravity platforms that can host a wide range of experiments without requiring astronaut involvement. The team has already flown biological payloads through its MAYASAT-1 mission and is preparing upcoming GEN missions planned for 2026. The company aims to make in-space research and manufacturing more accessible to universities, research institutes, and commercial partners across Europe and beyond.

Zagreb-based Hypefy operates an AI-powered platform that helps brands plan, run, and analyse influencer marketing campaigns more efficiently. The platform automates key steps such as influencer discovery, campaign setup, content review, payments, and performance tracking. By using data from social platforms rather than a closed internal database, Hypefy aims to match brands with relevant creators and reduce the manual work typically involved in managing influencer campaigns, particularly those using micro and nano influencers.

Founded in 2021, the company has raised €1.6 million. Hypefy works with more than 100 brands across multiple markets and supports campaigns on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. The funding is supporting further product development, team growth, and expansion into additional markets.

Zagreb-based Jurlina Coenergy is developing a magnetic plasma shaping system designed for fusion energy reactors. The company’s technology uses magnetic fields to influence plasma flow, control density, and reduce turbulence, with the goal of improving confinement and stability in magnetic confinement fusion systems. Its approach is based on modular magnetic constriction zones that aim to modulate plasma behaviour without direct material contact.

Founded in 2024, the company has raised €2.7 million. Jurlina Coenergy is progressing through testbed development and simulation-led refinement, with the longer-term aim of integration into toroidal configurations. The team is also positioning itself for participation in the EIC Pathfinder Open programme through a strategic consortium.

Zagreb-based Legit is a regtech company focused on helping organisations manage data privacy and compliance in an increasingly regulated digital environment. Its core product, Data Privacy Manager, is a cloud-based platform that automates key privacy tasks such as personal data discovery, consent management, data removal, and privacy programme governance.

Founded in 2022, Legit has raised €650k to support product development and market expansion. The company has gained international recognition, including being named to the RegTech100 2026 list, and its technology is used by organisations that need practical, scalable tools to meet data protection requirements. Legit continues to invest in applying AI to privacy protection to make compliance more efficient and easier to manage across complex data environments.

Zagreb-based Luppa is an employee satisfaction and engagement platform that helps organisations understand how their teams are feeling and where improvements are needed. The tool uses pulse and in-depth surveys combined with analytics and AI-generated action plans to give HR teams and managers real-time insights into engagement, productivity, and retention.

Founded in 2022, the company has raised €275k. Luppa is used by organisations across different industries to track trends, benchmark results, and support data-driven decisions around people management. Its focus is on providing a practical, easy-to-use solution that turns employee feedback into concrete actions rather than static reports.

Zagreb-based Revuto is a fintech startup focused on helping users take control of their subscription payments. Through its mobile app and virtual debit cards, users can approve, block, or temporarily pause any recurring charge before money leaves their account. This gives people greater visibility over subscriptions and helps prevent unwanted charges, free trial traps, and forgotten renewals across entertainment, software, and other digital services.

Founded in 2021, it combines traditional payment infrastructure with blockchain-based elements, allowing users to manage subscriptions using standard cards, cryptocurrencies, and decentralised finance tools. The company has raised €1.82 million and continues to expand its product offering, including additional rewards and token-based features, with the aim of giving consumers more flexibility and control over how recurring payments are handled.

Zagreb-based TABU is a salary analysis and benchmarking platform designed to bring more transparency to the job market. The platform allows individuals to compare their pay and benefits with peers in similar roles, while companies can benchmark internal salaries against market data to support fair and informed compensation decisions. It relies on real, anonymised user input rather than job ads or estimates, covering salaries, benefits, seniority, company size, and working conditions.

Founded in 2022, the company has raised €100k. TABU operates a freemium model, offering basic insights for free while charging for more advanced analytics and reports. Its goal is to help professionals prepare for salary discussions with realistic expectations and enable employers to make data-driven decisions that support retention, fairness, and long-term workforce planning.

Zagreb-based WASP is building a developer platform that simplifies full-stack web application development. They offer an open-source framework that allows developers to define an application’s structure through a simple configuration file, while continuing to work with familiar technologies such as React, Node.js, and Prisma. By handling common tasks like authentication, data synchronisation, and deployment out of the box, WASP reduces repetitive setup work and lets teams focus on product-specific logic.

Founded in 2020, the company has raised over €4.5 million and is backed by Y Combinator. WASP is focused on growing its developer community and expanding the framework’s capabilities, positioning itself as a practical option for startups and small teams looking to build and deploy full-stack applications faster without stitching together multiple tools.

By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!

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Finnish protein engineering company Avenue Biosciences has raised  $5.7 million in a Seed extension funding round co-led by Balnord and Tesi, with support from existing investors Voima Ventures, Inventure, University of Helsinki, and Dimerent.

The funding aims to help scale its high-throughput protein engineering technology that accelerates the discovery of protein-based therapies and tools for the biotechnology industry. The financing brings Avenue Biosciences’ total funding raised to date since 2024 to $8.7 million.

I spoke to Katja Rosti, co-founder and COO, to learn more.

Avenue Biosciences is dedicated to accelerating the discovery and development of protein biologics – drugs made using living cells, designed to treat disease by targeting specific pathways in the body in a more complex manner than traditional drugs, but whose complexity also makes them difficult to manufacture at scale.

Why modern biologics are so powerful — and so hard to make

 Modern biologics have been available for several decades; typical examples include human insulin and antibodies for treating breast cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

However, much life-saving therapy goes unrealised because of production barriers, particularly the cell’s limited ability to correctly fold and secrete complex proteins.

In response, Avenue Biosciences has developed what it describes as the first platform to measure and modulate the secretory pathway at scale.  It combines organic biology and machine learning to boost protein production through a proprietary approach grounded in years of scientific research at the University of Helsinki, Finland. 

According to Rosti, several factors have held the field back from making this possible earlier. 

She contends that although signal peptides — short amino-acid sequences that act as address labels, telling the cell where to send a newly made protein before it is removed from the mature molecule — were identified as early as the 1980s, this knowledge remained largely academic for decades.

“These signal peptides operate within the secretory pathway: the cell’s internal machinery that transports proteins from their site of synthesis to their final destination, most often outside the cell, to the cell membrane, or to other organelles. 

For therapeutic proteins, this pathway is critical, because this step often determines whether a biologic can be manufactured at all.”

When the science was largely there, but lacked a platform

For a long time, however, the biological understanding of this system was incomplete, and the tools needed to explore it systematically and at an industrial scale simply did not exist. Beyond technical constraints, Rosti also cites an organisational and cultural dimension.

“Biotech development tends to rely on established workflows,” she shared.

“Traditionally, companies have worked with a small set of well-characterised “safe” signal peptides, optimising expression through slow, sequential trial and error.

The idea of screening thousands of signal peptide variants in parallel, early in development, was neither technically feasible nor part of standard practice.”

In other words, until now, as with many breakthroughs, the pieces of the puzzle were already there — the biology, the industrial relevance, and the unmet need, ”but no one had yet assembled them into a scalable, integrated platform.

While biology gets smart, the secretory pathway is still a black box.

But even with today’s tools, the secretory pathway is still not fully understood, which, according to Rosti, makes it such a powerful frontier for innovation:

“As biological insight deepens, new parameters can be mapped and exploited, allowing the technology to evolve in step with scientific discovery.”

Novel protein-based biologics under development, for example, in cancer, rare diseases, or immunology, are becoming increasingly targeted and effective, performing several functions with a single therapeutic component: bringing immune cells to the right place, activating them, and recognising disease cells more specifically. 

“However, this adds complexity to the protein structure, adding manufacturing cost, or in the worst case, preventing the development completely”, shared Rosti.

“Ultimately, the signal peptides are removed from the mature protein, keeping the target essentially the same as the original, making this approach highly useful also in manufacturing biosimilars, the lower-priced versions of existing therapies.”

How Avenue Biosciences is cutting years from protein development timelines

To scale without slowing down or driving up costs, Avenue Biosciences has built its platform around massively parallel testing. Instead of trying to improve protein secretion one signal peptide at a time, the company screens thousands of variants in a single experiment, dramatically shortening development timelines.

“When a customer gives us a target sequence, we combine it with a library of about 5,000 to 6,000 different signal peptides,” says Rosti.

“These peptides act as the molecular ‘addresses’ that guide the protein out of the cell and into the culture medium, which is essential for large-scale manufacturing.”

This high-throughput approach replaces what is still the industry norm: sequential trial-and-error.

“Today, most teams test one signal peptide, tweak the conditions, then try another. It’s a slow, inefficient process,” Rosti explains.

 “By screening thousands in parallel, we can identify the best-performing variants in a single experiment, which is where the real time and cost savings come from.”

The economic impact is particularly significant for late-stage development, where expression problems can quietly derail years of R&D investment.

“There is a lot of hidden cost in projects that fail simply because the protein cannot be produced at sufficient yield,” she says.

“In some cases, we can step in late and actually rescue a programme by improving secretion without changing the therapeutic target itself. We’re effectively adding a booster to the molecule.”

Where wet-lab reality meets machine learning

While there’s plenty of noise around AI in biotech right now, Rosti holds close to her roots as a protein scientist, considering wet-lab biology as fundamental. 

“AI-designed proteins may look promising in silico, but that doesn’t guarantee they can be produced in cells,” she shared. 

"We use experimental data from large-scale screening to train machine-learning models.

This helps us understand patterns, refine libraries, and improve prediction. At the same time, computational insights can guide future experiments. It’s a two-way relationship.

A company may design a protein using AI and bring the sequence to us for real-world validation. But biology always has the final say.”

From research to business Crucially, Avenue Biosciences has had the home advantage of being the company’s first customer, validating its own platform, meaning the technology was already well validated during the research-to-business phase. 

“We came out of stealth at the end of 2024 and quickly gained customer traction,” explained Rosti.

“We generated revenue in our first year, which is encouraging. Today’s customers are established CDMOs and pharmaceutical companies," because, according to Rosti,

“They already understand the limitations of current secretion strategies and see the need for better solutions.Protein expression challenges vary widely, so collaboration is essential.“

Investors say Avenue is addressing one of the most fundamental and undersolved bottlenecks in biologics manufacturing, 

“Avenue’s technology taps into some of the largest opportunities in biotech right now: it significantly lowers the costs of biologics and transforms therapeutic protein manufacturing with the use of AI. Their combination of wet lab and machine learning enables the development of high-quality prediction tools for therapeutic developers, targeting the biggest bottlenecks in the industry. The team has shown incredible execution, with really strong industry names as their clients”, comments Gabriele Poteliunaite, Investor at Balnord.

“Many life-altering therapeutic innovations remain out of reach for most of the global population. We see significant growth opportunities for Avenue’s technology, which is deeply rooted in Finnish scientific discovery, and has the potential to become a gold standard in its field”, comments Investment Director Miia Kaye from Tesi.

The funding will be used primarily to invest in people and scientific capability.  According to Rosti

“We are hiring wet-lab scientists to work on core technology and customer projects. Knowledge building is our priority. Commercial expansion will follow, but the foundation is biological expertise.”

Lead image: Avenue Biosciences COO Katja Rosti and CEO TeroPekka Alastalo.Photo: uncredited.

“Ex Nunc Intelligence is solving one of the hardest problems in legal tech: building AI that lawyers can truly trust,”, says Pascal Stürchler, co-founder and CEO of Bloomhaus Ventures. “With a rare combination of legal domain expertise, top-tier AI engineering, and early traction, the team is well positioned to build core infrastructure for the future of legal work.”

Founded in 2022, Ex Nunc Intelligence is paints themselves as one of the first companies truly native to both law and AI, rather than a legal product built on top of generic AI. A key differentiator of Ex Nunc Intelligence is its ability to combine public legal sources with each client’s private knowledge.

Through secure and isolated data silos, law firms and legal departments can reportedly connect internal documents without compromising confidentiality.

This architecture addresses one of the main barriers to AI adoption in law: data protection, while transforming internal documents into structured, reusable, and strategic knowledge assets.

Where most legal AI tools wrap off-the-shelf models and apply standard preprocessing, Ex Nunc Intelligence says they combine deep legal expertise with advanced AI engineering to design truly intelligent legal processing pipelines.

The company has built a proprietary legal intelligence stack, designing its own models, a full-stack approach and architecture from data ingestion and legal structuring to retrieval, reasoning and generation.

“At Ex Nunc Intelligence we believe that where AI can truly make a difference in the legal sector is not by replacing lawyers, but by augmenting their expertise, securing their knowledge, and transforming both public and private legal information into a strategic asset,” added Kyriaki in a public statement.

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French autonomous defence systems startup Harmattan AI says it has hit a $1.4bn valuation, after raising $200m, in a funding round led by French aerospace group Dassault Aviation, which has inked a strategic partnership with the startup.

The startup has previously raised over $40m in funding. It is unclear what its valuation was prior to this latest funding round.

French President Emmanuel Macron heralded the partnership and funding announcement, highlighting the startup's elevation to unicorn status. On X, he posted: “An essential partnership with Dassault Aviation and a significant fundraising round for Harmattan AI grant it the status of a new French unicorn!

"This is excellent news for our strategic autonomy, for the technological superiority of our armed forces in the field of AI-activated defence drones, as well as for our economy."

Founded in 2024, Paris-based Harmattan AI develops autonomous defence systems, including strike and surveillance drones. It has deployed its tech with multiple NATO partners, it says.

Proceeds from the Series B will be used to expand Harmattan’s AI product offering into new areas and scale industrial manufacturing of its drone interception and electronic warfare platforms, the startup said. The partnership between the aerospace group and startup will support the development of embedded AI capabilities by Harmattan AI within Dassault Aviation's future air combat systems.

The startup says it has been awarded several "programs of record" by the UK and French Ministries of Defence.

Eric Trappier, chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation, said: “Dassault Aviation has always placed technological excellence and sovereignty at the heart of its values. 

"This partnership with Harmattan AI reflects our commitment to integrating high-value autonomy into the next generation of combat air systems.

"By joining forces with a fast-moving and innovative company, we reinforce our ability to deliver the advanced capabilities required by our armed forces in the decades ahead.”

Mouad M’Ghari, CEO and co-founder of Harmattan AI, said: “This partnership with Dassault Aviation marks a decisive step in the emergence of a new generation of autonomous defence systems. Dassault Aviation’s trust and leadership accelerate our mission: delivering scalable, sovereign AI capabilities to allied forces.

"By combining frontier AI with world-class military aviation expertise, we are shaping the future of collaborative air combat."

Former F1 World Champion Nico Rosberg is once again accelerating forward – this time not on the track, but in the venture capital world. His firm, Rosberg Ventures, has announced the close of its third fund at €86 million (£75 million), pushing total assets under management to approximately €172 million (£150 million).

In recent years, Rosberg Ventures has expanded its mandate to include direct co-investments in high-growth startups. These include ClickHouse, a real-time data analytics platform, and Ivy, a company building a universal API for instant bank payments – as well as Fuse Energy and Cardino.

“We’ve just closed our $100 million Fund III at Rosberg Ventures, oversubscribed with unprecedented demand, and capped allocations for optimised performance. I’m super humbled by the support we’ve received once again. A heartfelt thank you especially to all our long term partners for the trust,” says Nico Rosberg, Founder of Rosberg Ventures.

In the context of European VC fundraising in 2025, this €86 million close of Rosberg Ventures’ third fund aligns with a broader pattern of mid-sized and specialist VC vehicles securing capital.

Backed VC closed a similarly sized €86m Fund III to continue investing in frontier and DeepTech, while Concept Ventures raised €75 million for a large, Europe-wide pre-Seed vehicle.

At the larger end of the spectrum, Índico Capital Partners launched a €125 million Fund III focused on Southern Europe, and Ventech closed its sixth fund at €175 million to back around 35 European companies.

More specialised strategies have also attracted capital, including Rubio Impact Ventures (€70 million, impact-focused), U2V (€60 million, DeepTech spin-outs), and Catalpa Ventures (€30 million first close, HealthTech).

Taken together, these fundraises represent well over €600 million in committed capital, suggesting sustained LP appetite for European VC platforms that combine diversified exposure, sector focus, and structured fund strategies – placing Rosberg Ventures’ Fund III squarely within an active and competitive fundraising environment rather than as an outlier.

Founded following Rosberg’s surprise retirement from F1 in 2016 – just days after clinching the Formula 1 World Championship from Lewis Hamilton – the London-based venture firm deploys a Fund of Funds model, giving its investors exposure to elite VC outfits globally.

Since its inception, Rosberg Ventures has been active in backing both VC funds and individual startups, writing cheques typically in the range of €1.7 million (£1.5 million) to €4.2 million (£3.7 million).

The fund’s portfolio includes standout names such as SpaceX, Lyft, ClickHouse, and Lilium, among others. In parallel, Rosberg’s personal investment record spans early-stage bets on ventures like Jack & Jill AI, Clyx, Fyxer AI, and Black Forest Labs, all operating across software, AI, and enterprise sectors.

In a public statement, Rosberg also reflected on how calculated risk-taking and preparation – skills honed on the racetrack – are vital in venture capital.

“Here are some learnings from Formula 1 that have helped us progress so rapidly. Take your chances. Sometimes that means even taking those very low odds, 10% chances, but where the upside is enormous. You might be wondering how we can be brave and fully commit when failure is so highly likely?

“Well, everything comes down to preparation. It’s essential to go through all the failure scenarios. Then explore how to make the best of those negative outcomes, or develop a plan to mitigate their negative impact (so that they don’t actually look bad at all). This will give you the confidence to go all in on your opportunity.”

EU-Startups previously covered Rosberg Ventures in 2024, when they announced the close of a new fund of funds of more than €70 million, aimed at giving LPs diversified exposure to leading global venture capital managers rather than backing startups directly.

Since that 2024 fund announcement, Rosberg Ventures has also participated in direct startup investments, including backing Fuse Energy, which raised €59 million in 2025 to scale its UK energy operations, and Cardino, the Berlin-based used-EV marketplace that secured a €4 million Seed round in mid-2024.

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The CEO of Locai Labs, Britain’s answer to ChatGPT, James Drayson, says no tech company can guarantee their AI won’t produce explicit images – and accuses Silicon Valley rivals of pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Drayson is the son of former science minister Lord Drayson.

He is appearing before MPs and the Human Rights and the Regulation of AI committee on Wednesday as part of their probe into AI regulation and human rights risks.

Grok’s new image-editing feature allowed men to manipulate images of women and children - including everyday people and public figures - to remove their clothes and put them in sexualised positions, as well as to create unconsensual images of women being shot and killed.

And last year in the US, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III took his own life after allegedly being manipulated by an AI chatbot. 

Parliament’s Human Rights Committee is probing the risks and benefits of AI, how it might impact privacy, and discrimination, and whether current UK laws and policies are sufficient or if new legislation is needed to hold AI companies and developers accountable.

UK's AI rival outperforming US tech giants

Launched last year by founders James and George Drayson, Locai is the UK’s first rival to ChatGPT, and according to the company, is already outperforming US tech giants such as Claude, DeepSeek, and Gemini on key measures.

And with the Grok scandal splashed across headlines and parents worried about what AI might expose their children to next, Drayson says Locai Labs is taking a stand.

Unlike Silicon Valley rivals, Locai refuses to roll out image generation until it’s truly safe. It has also banned under-18s from accessing its AI chatbot, and is calling for radical transparency across the industry.

Drayson urges action and challenges the government to back British innovation. He asserts that industry needs to wake up.

"It’s impossible for any AI company to promise their model can’t be tricked into creating harmful content, including explicit images. These systems are clever, but they’re not foolproof. The public deserves honesty.

We’re the only AI company openly working to fix these problems, not pretending they don’t exist. If there’s a risk, we’ll say so – and we’ll show our work."

According to Drayson, the UK is relying on foreign AI "that doesn’t share our values".

"We need our own models, built for Britain, with British laws and ethics at their core. That’s how we protect our rights and our kids.

“We believe the UK can lead the world in responsible, values-driven AI, if we choose to. That means tough regulation, open debate, and a commitment to transparency. “AI is here to stay.

The challenge is to make it as safe, fair, and trustworthy as possible, so that its rewards far outweigh its risks.”

Geneva-based BioTech startup FluoSphera today announced that it has raised €1.23 million (CHF 1.15 million) in funding to make drug discovery faster, safer, and more human-relevant with its patented multi-tissue platform. 

The round was led by Soulmates Ventures and a Swiss business angel, with participation from IndieBio New York. The startup will use the funding to scale commercial collaborations, grow its business development team, and expand its AI and automation capabilities for large-scale imaging analysis.

“We’re building the next generation of preclinical tools, not just to get new medicine faster to market and at a lower cost, but also to enhance the quality of drug discovery processes. By improving human relevance and reducing reliance on animal models, we help our partners bring safer, more effective treatments to patients faster,” said Dr Clélia Bourgoint, CEO and co-founder of FluoSphera.

Founded by Dr Bourgoint and Gregory Segala, FluoSphera is a spin-off from the University of Geneva that provides a suite of systemic, in vitro drug discovery solutions. Citing Deloitte’s 2023 Pharmaceutical Innovation Report, the company stated that developing a new drug takes on average 10 to 15 years and costs between $2 and $3 billion (€1.7 and €2.57 billion). 

According to the company, despite these massive investments, over 90% of drug candidates still fail in clinical trials, with oncology programmes reporting success rates below 5%. FluoSphera attributed most of these failures to the fact that preclinical models cannot accurately predict how compounds behave in the human body. “Traditional 2D cell cultures can’t model organ interactions, and animal models fail to fully recapitulate human biology. As a result, key toxicities are often missed, leading to wasted time, sunk R&D costs, and delayed access to life-saving treatments,” it explained.

To address these limitations, the company has developed a multiplexed in-vitro platform that predicts drug effects in a human-like way, allowing drug developers to identify the most promising molecules earlier. 

Explaining its key differentiator, FluoSphera mentioned that, unlike traditional methods that test tissues in isolation or rely on complex organ-on-chip systems, its patented platform combines up to six or seven human tissue models in a single well, using proprietary fluorescent coding to track each one independently. 

The platform thereby enables researchers to observe how different organs interact and help them evaluate both efficacy and potential side effects in a single experiment, before animal or human testing. 

The company claimed that by reducing developmental risks and clinical and time-to-market costs, it helps drug developers achieve estimated savings of between $100 million and $500 million (€85.5 million to €428.1 million) per molecule.

The platform also helps developers align with evolving regulations, such as the FDA’s Modernisation Act 3.0, a proposed U.S.framework that encourages non-animal testing by validating New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for preclinical research. 

“As the pharmaceutical industry transitions away from animal testing, the need for reliable human-relevant models is immense. FluoSphera is opening a multi-billion-dollar opportunity by giving drug developers the means to innovate faster, safer, and more ethically. It represents a completely new approach to developing the next generation of medicines,” said Hynek Sochor, founder and Managing Partner, Soulmates Ventures. 

With this new funding, FluoSphera aims to strengthen its business development efforts to scale commercial activities with pharmaceutical companies and CROs, expand platform integration into drug development pipelines, and further develop its AI-based image analysis capabilities. It will also focus on scaling in the US and EU, as it takes initial steps towards entering the Asian market. 

Looking ahead, FluoSphera stated that it aims to broaden access to advanced human tissue modelling. Its long-term ambition includes bringing precision medicine closer to reality by tailoring drug testing to different population subgroups.

The post Female-led Swiss BioTech FluoSphera secures €1.23 million to advance animal-free, human-relevant drug discovery appeared first on EU-Startups.

FluoSphera, a Swiss biotech startup focused on drug safety and efficacy testing, has raised €1.23 million (CHF1.15 million) in funding. The round was led by Soulmates Ventures and a Swiss business angel, with participation from IndieBio New York.

Developing a new drug is a lengthy and costly process, and a large proportion of drug candidates do not succeed in clinical trials. One of the main reasons for these failures is that existing preclinical models often do not accurately predict how compounds will behave in the human body. Traditional two-dimensional cell cultures cannot represent interactions between organs, and animal models do not fully reflect human biology, which can result in key toxicities being overlooked and delays in the development of effective treatments.

To address these limitations, FluoSphera has developed a multiplexed in vitro platform designed to predict drug responses in a more human-relevant manner. The company’s patented technology allows multiple human tissue models to be combined in a single experiment, with each tissue tracked independently using proprietary fluorescent coding. This enables researchers to observe interactions between different organs and assess both efficacy and potential side effects earlier in the development process, before proceeding to animal or human testing.

Dr. Clélia Bourgoint, CEO and co-founder of FluoSphera, said the company is developing a new generation of preclinical tools aimed at accelerating and lowering the cost of bringing medicines to market, while also improving the overall quality of drug discovery.

By improving human relevance and reducing reliance on animal models, we help our partners bring safer, more effective treatments to patients faster.

The platform is designed to help drug developers reduce development risk, shorten timelines, and lower overall costs, while also supporting alignment with evolving regulatory frameworks that encourage the validation of non-animal testing methods for preclinical research.

With the new funding, FluoSphera plans to expand its business development activities with pharmaceutical companies and contract research organisations, increase integration of its platform into drug development workflows, and further develop its AI-based image analysis capabilities. The company intends to focus on growth in the United States and Europe, with initial expansion into Asian markets underway.

Today, Nico Rosberg announced that Rosberg Ventures  has just closed its $100 million Fund III, describing it on LinkedIn as “oversubscribed, with unprecedented demand, and capped for performance.”

Rosberg Ventures was founded by former Formula 1 World Champion Nico Rosberg after his retirement in 2016, transitioning from racing into technology investing. Rosberg Ventures builds its portfolio primarily through a VC fund-of-funds strategy and over the last year has begun making direct co-investments in standout companies.

These include ClickHouse, a real-time data analytics platform used by large tech companies and Ivy the developer of a global API for instant bank payments.

Beyond the firm’s direct activity, founder Nico Rosberg also has a track record of personal angel and syndicate investments — historically backing startups such as Jack & Jill AI, Clyx, Fyxer AI, and Black Forest Labs, among others, across software, AI, and enterprise sectors. 

On LinkedIn, Rosberg cited a few lessons from Formula 1 that have shaped how the firm thinks about building and investing:

Take your chances. Sometimes that means going for the 10% probability opportunities — when the upside is truly transformational. How do you commit when failure is more likely than success?

Preparation. You map every downside scenario, stress-test it, and work out how to mitigate or even turn those outcomes into acceptable ones. That’s what gives you the confidence to go all in. In sport, progress often comes from attacking — not playing it safe.

"Intuitively deciding on which chances to take, and then sometimes succeeding, will compound very powerfully."

According to Rosberg:

“Venture is a long game. There’s no chequered flag, no single finish line. But crossing $200M+ in AUM is a milestone that gives us the firepower to keep pushing, keep building, and keep racing forward.”

Zepo Intelligence, the company redefining human-centric security, has closed a $15 million seed funding round, with participation from Kibo Ventures, eCAPITAL, and TIN Capital.

Traditional cybersecurity approaches, such as isolated training tools and email filtering, are becoming increasingly ineffective as generative AI accelerates the scale and sophistication of social engineering. According to the World Economic Forum, social engineering attacks have risen by 1,200 per cent since the launch of ChatGPT, contributing to more than $1 trillion in losses in 2024.

To address this challenge, Zepo provides a workspace security platform that combines human risk management with real-time threat detection. The platform enables organisations to simulate real-world, AI-driven social engineering attacks (including deepfakes, voice calls, cross-platform messages, and personalized phishing) so they can identify human vulnerabilities and strengthen team readiness through real-time metrics and behaviour-based training.

This integrated approach supports continuous protection of employees across multiple digital communication channels through a unified and proactive security framework.

Antonio Muñoz, CEO and co-founder of Zepo Intelligence, noted that artificial intelligence has transformed social engineering into one of the most serious challenges facing organisations today.

As attackers increasingly rely on generative AI and multi-vector personalised attacks, traditional cybersecurity—focused on isolated training tools and email filters—no longer provides sufficient protection. Zepo addresses this gap by advancing agentic social intelligence for workspace security,

The funding will support the expansion of Zepo’s team and the global scaling of its proprietary technology. Following the investment, the company is launching a hiring strategy focused on data engineering and artificial intelligence.

According to Enrique Holgado, CPTO and co-founder, AI is central to the platform, and Zepo aims to provide an environment for engineers to develop advanced technologies at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity.

Supported by fivefold year-over-year revenue growth and adoption by several global enterprises, Zepo plans to expand its workforce and operations across Europe and the United States over the next 18 months. The investment will further advance the company’s efforts to strengthen human risk management on a global scale.

Spain-based Zepo Intelligence, a cybersecurity startup protecting organisations from AI-powered social engineering, has today announced the closing of a €12.8 million ($15 million) Seed investment round. 

The round was backed by Kibo Ventures, eCAPITAL, and TIN Capital. The fresh capital will be used to scale its proprietary technology globally and expand its team, with a focus on data engineering and artificial intelligence roles. 

“AI is the core of our platform. For engineers looking to develop their careers at the frontier of AI and cybersecurity, Zepo offers the ideal environment to build technology with global impact,” explained Enrique Holgado, CPTO and co-founder of Zepo.

Founded in 2021 by Antonio Muñoz and Enrique Holgado, Zepo Intelligence claims to be the first agentic social intelligence platform for workspace security. It enables organisations to simulate real-world, AI-driven social engineering attacks (deepfakes, voice calls, cross-platform messages, or personalised phishing), identify human vulnerabilities. It also provides metrics and training adapted to each employee’s behaviour, to empower team capabilities. 

According to Zepo, the rise of generative AI has rendered traditional cybersecurity involving isolated training tools and email filters obsolete. Citing a World Economic Forum report, the company mentioned that since the launch of ChatGPT, social engineering attacks have surged by 1,200%, resulting in over $1 trillion (nearly €860 billion) in losses in 2024 alone.

Antonio Muñoz, CEO and co-founder of Zepo Intelligence, explained, “Artificial Intelligence has turned social engineering into one of the biggest challenges society faces today. As attackers have exploited generative AI and moved to multi-vector personalised attacks on employees, traditional cybersecurity – focused on isolated training tools and email filters – no longer provides the needed protection. Zepo responds to this gap by leading Agentic Social Intelligence for Workspace Security.

“The most serious security failures today don’t begin with systems. They begin with people. Organisations need defences that understand human behaviour in real time, not incident reports after the damage is done. Zepo’s platform goes beyond training and simulations by combining human risk management with live threat detection. In a world where employees can’t reliably spot deepfakes or AI-crafted manipulation, protection has to show up in the moment. Just before a message turns into a transfer, a credential leak, or a breach. The result is a unified, proactive layer that helps protect employees across the channels where modern work actually happens.”

Zepo Intelligence was founded in Southern Europe and currently has teams distributed across New York, Madrid, Tel Aviv, and Mexico City. The startup has reported 5x year-over-year revenue growth and plans to increase the team and expand operations in Europe and the US over the next 18 months. The company has also been recognised by Google as one of the 15 most innovative cybersecurity and AI startups globally.

The post Spain’s Zepo Intelligence raises €12.8 million to protect workplaces from AI-driven human-targeted cyber threats appeared first on EU-Startups.

This week, we tracked more than 35 tech funding deals worth over €407 million and 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories

In addition to this week's top financials, we've also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about.

If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed.

? Notable and big funding rounds

?? E-commerce operating startup Swap raises $100M

?? FineHeart raises €35M in Series C first closing and receives €48M in grants

?? With €30M+ Series B, Bactolife prepares shift from R&D to commercial scale

??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers

??  UK AI firm Faculty to be acquired by consulting giant Accenture

??  Diginex buys Plan A for €55M: What it means for Europe’s carbon accounting scene?

?? BENTELER acquires ioki to expand autonomous mobility in Europe 

?? Taskbase acquires Micromate redefine corporate learning

? Interesting moves from investors

? CaixaBank reaches 30 million euros with the first operations of its venture debt fund

? Poland gets new fund: EIF and BGK launch €350M Future Tech Poland fund to boost tech innovation

? Antler bags $510M in new funds, half for the US founders, as Airalo and Lovable soar to unicorn

?️ In other (important) news

?? Capital flows to scale as 2025 closed

?? European Tech.eu Pulse: key trends and investment in December

?? December 2025's top 10 European tech deals you need to know about

?? UK bets £210M on cybersecurity to unlock digital government — and £45B in productivity savings

?? Bunq reapplies for US banking licence

? Recommended reads and listens

?? CES 2026 showcases Europe’s hardware renaissance

? Europe’s startups go the last mile at CES

? Cyberette is building forensic-grade AI for a post-truth internet

? European tech startups to watch 

?? AI deeptech startup Principled Intelligence closes €1.85M pre-seed round

?? Legaltech Alice raises €1M to bring trustworthy AI workflows to legal casework

?? WholeSum raises £730,000 to advance a qualitative data analysis platform

?? Social and community networking app Cliq raises seven-figure investment

?? Webrazzi GSYF invested $300,000 in Cypien AI

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